Lingvistiko

Lingvistiko, or linguistics, is the scientific study of language and its structure, use, and development. It aims to describe how languages are organized, how people learn and use them, and how languages change over time. The field treats language as a system of interconnected levels, from sounds to sentences, and seeks general principles that apply across languages as well as language-specific patterns.

Core subfields include phonetics and phonology (speech sounds and their patterns), morphology (word formation), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (language in context). Other branches cover sociolinguistics (language in society), psycholinguistics (language processing in the mind), neurolinguistics (neural basis of language), historical linguistics (language change), typology (cross-language comparison), and computational linguistics (language processing with computers).

Methodologically, linguists use descriptive analysis, theoretical modeling, experimental studies, fieldwork, and corpus linguistics. Data can come from native speakers, recorded speech, written texts, or large digital corpora, and researchers may employ experimental paradigms, brain-imaging techniques, or computational models to test hypotheses about structure and use.

Applications of linguistics include language education, language policy and planning, speech technology, machine translation, information retrieval, and forensic linguistics. In Esperanto contexts, lingvistiko is the standard term for the discipline.